


time and hearts will wear us thin

by blazeofglory



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:22:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9296039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blazeofglory/pseuds/blazeofglory
Summary: Jack Zimmermann's life story isn't exactly a happy one. Kent knows it because Kent's lived it, but... there's a lot that Bitty doesn't know.Kent convinces Jack to tell Bitty everything.(Jack Zimmermann and suicide attempts: a history.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: discussion of past suicide attempts, self-harm, prescription pill abuse, and lots of anxiety and depression. 
> 
> Please let me know if there's anything else I forgot!

It’s so late that it’s probably actually _early_ , so it takes Bitty a moment to even process what woke him up. The room is still dark and he can feel the weight of his boys both in bed with him, and everything seems just fine… He’s drifting off again when he hears the whisper that must’ve woken him in the first place.

“You have to tell him,” Kent is whispering. Bitty freezes, heart thudding fast as a thousand worries flood his head. He already knows they’re talking about him.

“No, I don’t,” Jack refutes immediately, just as quiet, but where Kent’s voice had almost been _pleading_ , Jack’s leaves no room for argument.

Kent, of course, has always been the only one to successfully argue with Jack, so he presses on.

“You don’t think it’s unfair?” Kent needles, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain. “It’s—it’s an important fact about you. We’re all boyfriends now, Jack. We’re supposed to tell each other everything.”

Jack huffs quietly. “We _do_ tell each other everything.”

Kent responds with a snort, so Jack amends, “I tell you both everything happening _now_ , but that—it’s the past, Kenny, it doesn’t matter and he doesn’t need to worry about it.”

Bitty squeezes his eyes shut and prays his breathing still sounds even, despite the panic coursing through his veins. They’re keeping something from him, which—it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, should it? There’s so much history between Jack and Kent, so many years without Bitty, and there are so many questions Bitty has that he’s been too nervous to ask.

“It’s not the past,” Kent murmurs, quieter than before, making Bitty strain to hear. “You know that.”

Jack is silent for one long, tense moment. Then Bitty can feel him shifting in bed, cuddling up closer with Kent from the sounds of it. Jack hadn’t even been touching him, but Bitty’s side feels colder now with the distance between them.

“Once an addict, always an addict,” Jack finally responds, words muffled against Kent’s skin.

Now—now Bitty is just confused. The guilt starts to creep in, because this—this conversation is not meant for his ears. That’s the whole _point_ of this conversation, apparently. But it’s not his fault they decided to talk about it while he’s sleeping _right next to them_ ; he can’t be blamed for eavesdropping.

They’re still talking, but their voices have dropped so low, murmuring into each other’s ears, and Bitty can’t make out a single word. At one point, he hears the soft sounds of kissing.

Eventually, the boys both fall silent for good. Kent starts to snore softly. Bitty braves a glance over, and surely enough, they’re both asleep.

Bitty has never felt more awake.

 _Once an addict, always an addict_ , is echoing in his head over and over. Jack is an addict, and Bitty didn’t know. He remembers his freshman year Samwell, all the rumors he heard about Jack, everything he read the one and only time he’d googled him—rumors of alcoholism, a cocaine addiction, painkillers, Adderall, speed, accusations of a hundred different types of drugs. Bitty’s never known what to believe. He knows as much as the rest of the world knows: Jack went to rehab instead of the draft. Some of the rumors say _overdose_ and a few even say _suicide attempt_ , but Bitty has never put much stock in those.

Jack’s never brought it up, and Bitty’s been too nervous to ask.

Bitty makes a mental list of the things he knows for sure:

  1. The events of the draft and whatever happened between Jack and Kent back then fucked Kent up, to the point where Bitty knows he still has nightmares and is terrified Jack is going to leave him again.
  2. Jack has anxiety.
  3. Jack takes daily pills for his anxiety.
  4. There’s this spot on Jack’s right thigh that Kent always kisses. There are little scars there that Bitty’d never thought too much about until he realized that they’re weirdly straight and uniform.
  5. Jack doesn’t drink much, but he used to.
  6. Jack is an addict.
  7. Bitty is very, very worried.



Bitty closes his eyes again, but sleep doesn’t come for hours.

 

-

 

Bitty grew up in Georgia, he didn’t come out of the closet until college, and he lives with his two boyfriends but he still hasn’t told his parents that he’s gay. The point is: Bitty is a practiced liar. He’s good at pretending he’s fine and he’s _fantastic_ at pretending certain things don’t bother him.

In the morning, Kent and Jack act normal as ever, so Bitty swallows his anxiety and plays along.

Weeks pass. The boys play hockey. Bitty works at the bakery.

They sleep in the same bed every night, but Bitty finds himself staying awake longer than usual, _long_ past the point of being bone tired, listening for any hint of another whispered conversation, night after night. He hears nothing.

He spends a lot of time worrying.

Two months pass, and Bitty gets home from work to find Jack and Kent sitting in the living room, both home earlier than usual—Kent smiles and greets him when he gets in, but Jack can’t quite meet his eye.

“Everything okay?” Bitty asks cautiously. He kicks off his shoes and shucks his jacket, joining Kent on the couch. Jack, sitting in the armchair to his left, bites his lip, but nods.

“Jack needs to talk to you,” Kent says. Familiar worry sparks inside Bitty, and the panic must show on his face, because Kent is quick to reassure, “Everything is okay, I should’ve led with that. We’re all okay.”

“I love you,” Jack breaks in, drawing Bitty’s gaze over to him. His beautiful blue eyes look tired. His hands are on his knees, a white knuckled grip that Bitty knows is to keep his hands from shaking.

“I love you too,” Bitty responds slowly, once it’s clear that Jack isn’t just going to keep talking. “Honey, what’s going on?”

Jack takes a deep breath and looks Bitty right in the eye. Careful and practiced, he begins, “There’s a lot you don’t know about my past, and… I haven’t told you because I don’t want you to worry.” Jack’s glance cuts over to Kent, then back to Bitty. “But I—I want you to know, so you’ll really know me.”

Jack pauses, so Bitty chimes in, “I _do_ know you, Jack.”

“You don’t know everything,” Jack whispers back. His gaze drops again, down to the floor this time, then briefly up to Kent again.

“Start from the beginning,” Kent encourages softly; Jack nods.

Bitty is trying his level best not to freak out, so he reaches forward for Jack’s hand, prying it off his knee and holding it tight. On his other side, Kent leans into him, a heavy, reassuring presence that keeps Bitty calm.

“The beginning,” Jack echoes. It seems like a long time before he looks back up. “Kenny knows all of this because he was there for most of it…”

Bitty murmurs, “okay,” and Jack keeps going.

“I was diagnosed with anxiety around 16,” Jack continues, and— _oh_. Maybe he really is going to tell Bitty what he’s been dying to know. “They put me on strong meds because it was so bad, and it—it worked for a while. Helped me focus. But it wasn’t enough, so I—I started taking more than I should. I took too many and I drank a lot, and I was… a mess, Bits. I was such a mess.”

Bitty squeezes his hand in reassurance.

“I was addicted,” Jack says. “I was high all the time, and it just made me feel worse. I had myself convinced that I wouldn’t get drafted and my parents would hate me and Kenny would leave… I was miserable.” His voice is so small, so quiet, and his eyes are closed now, and—Bitty just wants to hug him. But he knows that Jack needs to get this out, so he sits quietly. He waits, and after a moment, Jack goes on, “I wasn’t diagnosed until after, but I was depressed too. I was cracking under the pressure.”

Kent gets up suddenly, moving to perch on the edge of the coffee table, forming a perfect triangle between the three of them. He grabs Jack’s free hand. They’re all quiet until Jack starts talking again.

“The night before the draft, I decided to fail on my own terms instead of anyone else’s. I—I overdosed on my meds. On purpose.”

Bitty finds it very hard to breathe all of a sudden. “You—?”

“I tried to kill myself,” Jack answers, and Bitty lets the tears that have been pooling in his eyes finally spill. Jack takes a deep breath and soldiers on. Bitty’s starting to understand why he never talks about the past.

In a hushed whisper, Jack says, “Kenny found me.”

Bitty’s heart breaks for the hundredth time in the past half hour.

Kent, so silent until now, chimes in. His eyes are shiny with tears too, even as he forces a smile when he meets Bitty’s eyes. “He was half-dead in a hotel bathroom, Bits… I called 911 and his parents, and… Then I had to go to the draft alone.”

Kent looks back at Jack, whose eyes finally open to stare back.

“You wouldn’t let me in to see you,” Kent whispers, the hurt in his voice so real and raw, despite almost a decade of time since this all happened. The look on Jack’s face makes Bitty’s chest ache.

“I was angry that you saved me,” Jack responds, and Kent nods minutely. This is a conversation they’ve had before, Bitty can tell that much. Jack looks back at Bitty now and swallows thickly. “So I—I went from the hospital to rehab. I didn’t let Kent visit and I didn’t answer his calls, and he… went to Vegas. The rehab center was in Canada, near my parents. When I got out, I… I stayed with them.”

“You coached peewee,” Bitty chimes in. He knows this much.

Jack smiles, watery and small, but there. “Yeah. And I tried to get better.” His smile fades. “It—it didn’t always work, though. I cut out all my medication because I didn’t trust myself to be on it at all, but without it, I was struggling again. I was so _angry_ with myself for throwing my whole life away, for failing Kent and my dad and the whole world… I told my parents I wanted to get back on meds to control my anxiety, and they believed me.”

Bitty feels a sense of dread. He doesn’t like where this is going.

“I tried again.”

There’s no question about what Jack means.

“No one found me this time,” Jack continues, voice neutral; carefully devoid of emotion. “But I didn’t take as many pills, and I just—I threw them all up. I didn’t tell anyone. I got better, _properly_ , and then I went to Samwell.”

Jack smiles again, brittle and forcefully casual. “You know the rest, Bits.”

“ _Jack_ ,” Kent interrupts, before Bitty has the chance to say anything. The look on Kent’s face is stern; Jack responds to it with a tired sigh. “Tell him the rest.”

“The rest?” Bitty prompts quietly, feeling vaguely sick. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can handle. The thought—the _mental image_ of Jack, so young and so hurt, trying to kill himself and feeling so alone… Bitty can’t stand it.

Jack drops Kent’s hand to run his fingers through his hair anxiously.

“I picked up a bad habit that first year,” Jack admits, staring hard at the floor, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. His hand falls down to his thigh, fingers tapping the exact spot where Bitty knows those odd scars are. _No_. “When I was stressed, I tried—uh, cutting myself. I thought it would help, but it didn’t. I was back on anxiety and depression meds, and I… I thought I could trust myself with them this time, but I was wrong again.”

“You tried a third time?” Bitty guesses, so, so quiet. He almost doesn’t want an answer.

Jack nods.

“When?” Bitty can’t help but ask.

Jack freezes. It’s Kent who answers, softly, “Spring of his sophomore year.”

They’d met fall of Jack’s junior year.

Jack—Jack had tried to kill himself just a few months before they met. Bitty doesn’t even notice that he’s started crying again until Kent is gently pushing tissues into his hand.

“But—but since then, have you—?”

“ _No_ ,” Jack answers immediately and emphatically. “I haven’t hurt myself or abused my meds or even really wanted to, I promise. I mean—I’m still an addict, because that… that’s not something that goes away. But I’m _better_ now, I swear.”

Without really thinking about it, Bitty moves off of the couch and into Jack’s lap, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in Jack’s shoulder. He feels Kent move up behind him, holding them both close. He’s not sure which one of them is shaking—maybe they all are.

They stay like that for several minutes, just breathing and holding each other.

“I love you,” Jack murmurs after a while. “Bitty, I’m sorry it took me this long to tell you. And Kenny, I—I’m sorry for everything I put you through.”

“We love you too, honey.”

A beat of silence, then Kent’s quiet voice. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

 

Bitty still worries, but Jack is okay. They’re all okay.

That night, Jack sleeps in the middle and they all cuddle close.

Bitty sleeps like a rock.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I thought it would be therapeutic, and it sort of was. There's a lot of debate in fandom over Jack's overdose-- whether it was an accident or a suicide attempt. My position on this is pretty obvious, and the thing is: most people who try to kill themselves don't just try once. 
> 
> In canon, there's still a lot that we don't know if Bitty knows about Jack-- and a lot about Jack that us readers don't know at all. I wanted to write Jack telling Bitty everything, because I think that would be therapeutic for Jack the same way this was for me, but... I also really wanted Kent in there, because y'all know I love Kent. Everything Jack tells Bitty, Kent already knew. Even everything that happened after the draft/rehab, Jack always turned to Kent when things got tough. In a way, he was using Kent, and they both knew it, and he's apologized. But Kent was always, always there to put Jack back together when he fell apart. 
> 
> As for now, Jack really is better. But no one ever gets 100% better, do they? This time, though, when things get hard, he's got Kent and Bitty right by his side to help him through.


End file.
